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I have been writing some thoughts on Authority for Church Doctrine and
Practice. Recently it crossed my mind that the Canon of scripture might be more
important for the subject than I had previously thought. In other words,
Protestants advance the doctrine of Sola
Scriptura, but, the question must be asked, what counts as scripture? If
the books, which Protestants refer to as Apocryphal,
are indeed inspired scripture, then, perhaps, Protestants need to “return to
the scriptures”. When we come to the question of the Canon there seems to be a
difficulty for the Protestant doctrine of Sola
Scriptura, namely, without the canon, what is scripture? Prior to the
establishment of the canon how did Christians know what was doctrinally right?
I’ve already mentioned this problem in other posts. I have
to say, at the outset, that I am not a huge fan of the way sola scriptura is commonly explained; it seems to be ignorant of
the fact of interpretation (regardless of which books are canonical, insp…

Introduction In his article, “Divine Providence”,
due to constraints of space, Flint equated the thomistic view with the
Calvinistic view, as one of those Christian views which abandons the
libertarian view of freedom. “…Some Christians have suggested that the problems
arise from our assuming a misguided picture of freedom—that which is often
called libertarianism. Abandon this
picture…and our problems dissolve; human freedom, properly understood, is fully compatible with God’s complete
control and universal foreknowledge.”[1] As
we will soon see in detail, and as should already be evident from the
definitions, Calvinism and Thomism are in two completely different camps on
this issue. As most thomists will agree, attempting to explain the thomistic
doctrine of sovereignty and free will in just a couple of pages is an almost
hopeless endeavor, because Thomism is a system, and as such, its parts are intricately
intertwined. However, with great caution, we will attempt to brie…

One of the main proponents of Open
Theism is John Sanders who wrote the book, The
God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence.[1] In this book Sanders points out
that his main worry, in his theological endeavor, is to preserve the
relationship of true love between God and his creatures.[2] The Open Theist view depends upon
placing God within time,[3] and claiming that God actually
interacts with man exactly as the Bible portrays his interactions.[4] This means that God does not truly
know the future, aside from certain events that He pre-ordained. He is, in
fact, just as surprised as we are by each and every event of our lives. Interestingly enough the proponents of Open Theism
insist on a literal hermeneutic which interprets all descriptions of God, in
the Bible, as literal descriptions of God. Therefore, when God, in the garden,
called out to Adam and Eve, asking for their whereabouts, God really had no
idea where they were.[5]
Proponents of this view claim that it is not only fai…

In his
book The Problems of Philosophy,[1]
Bertrand Russell defends a Representationalist view of epistemology, and the
realist claim that there is a mind-independent reality. In this short paper we
will briefly summarize Russell’s claims about how we know, followed by an
analysis of his claims. In the opening paragraph Russell claims
that philosophy is searching for certainty.[2] We
assume, uncritically, according to Russell, the certainty of many things,
“which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent
contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it
is we really may believe.”[3]
The more we learn about the world, this reality in which we find ourselves, the
more we realize that we know very little for sure. The more we learn, the less
we are certain about what we thought we knew. We think, says Russell, that we
should begin, in our search for certainty, “with our present experiences, and
in some sense, …